


you might be from the moon or mars

by eversall



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, a character study of jace if you squint, more of a character study of jace and simon together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 09:19:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12166026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eversall/pseuds/eversall
Summary: “You know I have angel blood, right?” Jace asks scathingly instead of letting his mind grasp the idea of being breathless in Simon’s arms too much. It’s hard not too, though, when he sees Simon’s fingers drumming restlessly across his thigh, hands just slightly larger than Jace’s. Jace wonders how the cigarettes would look against Simon’s fingers, and then he wonders how his own fingers would look sliding up against Simon’s, sure and steady.





	you might be from the moon or mars

**Author's Note:**

> loosely inspired by listening to [ fire escape ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77z7VSmrZqw) by andrew mcmahon in the wilderness (which is where the title's from as well) and wanting to write something slightly angsty to the idea of it. come find me on [ tumblr ](http://eversall.tumblr.com/)!

The first week of August finds Jace hanging out on the roof of the Institute, a pack of cigarettes clutched loosely in his grip. They’re skinnier than he thought they would be between his fingers, and it occurs to him that his hands are large, that the thickness of his index finger is eclipsing the off-white packaging of the Marlboro.

Simon spills out of the stairs onto the roof suddenly, in that graceless way he has where he’s in one spot one moment and suddenly not, jumping from space to space with a strange energy that’s gotten stranger with his vampirism. He hesitates, and then comes to sit beside Jace, who quietly mourns the days when Simon pretended to be angry, or at least irritated, with Jace’s very existence; now he makes himself at home in Jace’s space, his aftershave a sharp, beautiful scent in the middle of New York asphalt.

“You know those kill you, right?” Simon asks, and Jace glances at him, raising an eyebrow. They’re both wearing T-shirts, a strangely vulnerable sight in the Institute even though it’s the peak of summer and the heat is settling in despite Magnus’ protective wards, suffocating the bricks and making the air still and humid. There’s a cool wind drifting through the city tonight, though, and it ruffles Jace’s fringe and makes Simon’s curls look adorably tousled, like someone’s spent hours clutching at it, voice breathless and eyes glazed.

“You know I have angel blood, right?” Jace asks scathingly instead of letting his mind grasp the idea of being breathless in Simon’s arms too much. It’s hard not too, though, when he sees Simon’s fingers drumming restlessly across his thigh, hands just slightly larger than Jace’s. Jace wonders how the cigarettes would look against Simon’s fingers, and then he wonders how his own fingers would look sliding up against Simon’s, sure and steady.

Simon’s lips quirk up, and Jace forces himself to look at Simon properly, take in the way his eyes are a little red and his cheeks are paler than usual. Simon can go days without feeding though, and Jace is never sure what the etiquette is in these situations. Do you tell a vampire he needs to drink more blood? Is it like just telling someone to take iron supplements?

(Is it weird because Jace’s blood runs through Simon’s veins? Is _he_ allowed to talk about it at all, to force Simon to go through anything else with Jace that he hasn’t given already?)

“I don’t think lung cancer cares, to be honest, but you can go ahead.” Simon says, shrugging like he doesn’t care. Jace thinks he _does_ care, because Simon’s the type of guy who cares about the trivial things like that, things that other people throw away carelessly. Simon’s heart picks it all up and tries to hold it together to make a person better.

Jace sighs and throws the cigarette off the roof, watching as it spins off-balance, listing to the left as the nicotine in the end drags it down, and then fizzles out to a crisp as it hits the invisible ward.

“I tried one already.” He says dismissively. “It tastes like a fucking burnt demon.” Simon laughs at that, short and surprised, a sweet sound at three in the morning. Jace looks at him seriously through half-lidded eyes, watching the way the grey tinge of the light-polluted night sky brightens Simon’s face, makes him seem ethereal.

Or maybe Simon’s just pale, and needs blood.

“When’s the last time you fed?” Jace wonders out loud, and when Simon turns to look back at him with a puzzled look on his face Jace opens his mouth, closes it, and then tries to backtrack, muttering “I mean – you just look – “

“Oh,” Simon says, surprised, “yeah.” He frowns thoughtfully at Jace for a second longer, looking like he wants to say something, and then he smiles, quiet and mysterious, as he stands. “I guess I’m gonna do that.”

“Have fun.” Jace says agreeably, nodding as he draws his knee up, resting his elbow across it and spinning the Marlboro package. It suddenly feels large and bulky in his hands, like it has something Simon’s doesn’t like, something that Simon’s seen the dark side of. It’s not _hard_ to see the dark side of cigarettes, but in the stillness of the night and the way Jace’s mind feels heavier all at once, it seems especially important, like the package _means_ something.

He tosses it up in the air once and then draws his arm back and throws it across the air into the ward, watching with a kind of satisfaction as the magic bites into it, orange curling quickly across the ends and erasing it from the world. There’s a breathless sort of laugh from behind him and Jace looks back at Simon, unable to stop himself from grinning at the boy across the way, feeling like he’s gotten something right, something small and insignificant but still worth getting right anyway.

“Wanna raid the fridge with me?” Simon asks, and it felt poetic to hold that cigarette in his hands but it feels like something else entirely to hold Simon’s night in his hands when he says _yes_ to that.

.

The second week of August finds Jace on the roof again, caressing the neck of a beer bottle, feeling pleasantly buzzed and more than a little melancholy as he rolls the Heineken between his fingers.

“Is there a reason we’re not drinking at the bar, where this many empty bottles are socially acceptable?” Simon asks, suddenly _there_ , and Jace feels his breath catch, his world tilting on its axis, and he lets the bottle fall from his grips a few inches until it hits the floor, a soft clang echoing through the night. Simon squats down, his eyes a little sad as he passes a hand over the two bottles already on the floor.

“I still can’t – “ Jace makes a vague hand motion, hopes to the Angel that Simon will get it, will get the way every Downworlder in there looks at him like they can tell he’s the cause of so many parts of the war. It doesn’t matter that he died and came back with the feeling of his veins being all wrong, his blood foreign in his own body, or that it’s like he’s living in the phoenix’s fire with no escape, no rebirth. He’s still that person, the one who killed a roomful of people in the blink of an eye.

Maia always looks at him with eyes that are dark and sympathetic, for all that she scowls at him, and she presses free beer into his hands whenever he’s in the area. They always share a bottle, a silent toast to the people they’ve lost, taking swigs and passing it to each other as they lean against a back alley and talk quietly. In some other world, he asked Maia on a date and carried her to his bed while she laughed after her final exam; in this world, she’s drafting a pack expansion contract with Izzy downstairs and he’s looking at Simon like he can find the answers to his life in the reflection of the moon in his brown, brown eyes.

“Yeah,” Simons says, touching the side of his face where the Seelie Queen’s marks lingered for weeks before fading into angry, silvery scars, “I know.”

Simon doesn’t even accidentally go near Central Park now, and Jace wants to tell him it’s pointless, that that’s _not_ the only opening and that it’s closed now anyway, but more than that he wants to tether Simon to him and walk slowly past the bridge, wants Simon upright and proud as he steps surely, secure in the knowledge that no one will let that happen to him again.

The truth is that that’s a lie; the only person that can save Simon is Simon, and the only person that can save Jace is Jace, and salvation always seemed like a long shot anyway.

“You’re welcome to join me.” Jace says, gesturing at the bottle he’s still got left. Simon eyes it and then sits on the floor, his legs crossed and his elbows resting on his knees as he considers Jace.

“I wanna say that I don’t really drink,” Simon says slowly, “but that’s not true, and it’s really just that I don’t drink when it seems like someone’s drinking too much?”

Jace licks his lower lip and traces the way Simon peers at him through his thick eyelashes, and mutters “Are you telling me or are you asking me?” but he doesn’t push it. He takes the bottle for himself, reaching across the space between them and feeling every second of it, like he’s a breath away from the precipice.

He twists the cap off, chucks it in a corner somewhere and grasps the beer loosely in his hands as he takes a swig, tilting his head back as the beer slides down his throat. He’s buzzed enough that he doesn’t dwell on the way it’s gotten slightly warm and bitter, watching instead as Simon keeps _looking_ at him. There are apologies on the tip of Jace’s tongue, like maybe this isn’t the way this scene is supposed to go, and he’s missed a line somewhere.

Instead, Simon holds a hand out and Jace numbly hands him the bottle, watches as Simon’s long fingers wrap around the stem and he tips his head back, his lips caressing the bottle lip as he takes a long swallow, his throat working, and when he brings the bottle back down his lips are shiny, wet with liquid, and Jace is transfixed, hypnotized by the whole thing. He sways forward, swearing he can feel Simon’s lips on his own as he takes the bottle back and absently swipes his thumb across the top.

“Tastes like shit!” Simon says suddenly, frowning in surprise and wrinkling his nose up. “God, how long’s it been out here?”

Jace can’t help but laugh, because Simon looks _so_ offended and New York is warm around them, warm enough that there’s no way the beer would have stayed cold, and it feels normal all at once to kick lightly at Simon’s foot and say “Maia only gives me the shitty kind, if you ask her nicely maybe she’ll give us the good kind that’s supposed to be served a little warm.”

“If you didn’t lurk around her bar like you’ve got your own personal thunderstorm going on, she’d stop spitting in your drinks.” Simon says, exasperated, and Jace doesn’t say anything, just ducks his head and smiles because Simon is so bright it hurts, like something good that’s breaking and reforming. “ _What_ , Jace?”

“Nothing.” Jace finished off the beer and holds his hands up in surrender. “We can go find you O-neg.”

“ _Now_ you’re talking.” Simon says, grinning, and they get to their feet and Jace’s heart begins to put down roots somewhere deep in his chest.

.

The third week of August Jace is just sitting there, nothing to kill himself with but his thoughts, and when Simon finds him there’s a thick, suffocating blanket of sadness around the whole thing.

“No next part of the rebellious teenage phase?” Simon asks, but his voice is quiet and when he comes near Jace shies away, feeling brittle and bright under the moon, like he’ll shatter if anyone touches him.

“Smoking, drinking – all that’s left is drugs and sex.” Jace laughs bitterly. “I’ve got the sex down, and I don’t really want to do drugs.”   
“Yeah.” Simon doesn’t say anything else, just leans against a railing and looks at Jace with eyes wide with sadness, full and sympathetic, and Jace almost can’t stand it; he wants to pitch himself away from the whole thing and still cling to it, drown in it. He almost wants Simon to be perfect for him, to say something beautiful and disarming that rights all the wrongs sitting pretty in Jace’s heart, but Simon’s just a guy. He’s just a boy, and Jace is tired of making Simon his saving grace.

“I’m here,” Simons says eventually, “you know, if you want to talk.”

Jace looks at him, and it’s the right thing to do, because suddenly Simon seems inevitable, like an unstoppable force moving towards Jace. It doesn’t matter when Simon says the right or wrong things, because he’s always trying to be the right person for Jace, always making a _choice_ , and Jace loves him. Jace loves Simon for choosing Jace, for choosing him for no other reason than the fact that he can.

“I wanna get out of here.” Jace says hoarsely. He doesn’t mean it as a pick-up line, means it more like his skin is buzzing like a livewire and he needs to be somewhere other than this roof to believe in himself, to believe that he won’t be up here again in the fourth week of August.

Simon grins, dimples appearing, and he suddenly produces a set of keys from his pocket.

“Demon bike?” he asks.

Jace has _never_ been the one on the back of the bike, has never slid his hands around a firm torso and pressed his front to the curve of a solid back and fitted together like puzzle pieces. He thinks he gets it now, why it’s so magical, when he splays his fingers across Simon’s muscles, feels the way Simon laughs breathlessly all the way down to his toes, brushes his nose along Simon’s hairline and breathes in the scent of day old cologne.

“Let’s go.” He whispers into Simon’s ear, and Simon grins, revving the engine and flexing his fingers as he turns back to Jace.

“Hold on.” He says, his voice low, and it’s so _fucking_ cheesy, but Jace feels his stomach flutter anyway, like he’s standing on unsteady land, and then there’s no land at _all_ ; the bike makes a roaring noise that echoes through Jace’s skull and punches forward, the world suddenly blurring around them. Simon lets out a shout, joy laced through every fiber of his being as he whoops and pushes the bike upwards, Jace hanging on for dear life as he tries to look everywhere at once, taking in the brilliant glittering yellow lights around them.

He forgets, sometimes, how vast the city is, how many buildings are crammed together, overflowing with life. Cars are still going at it, even though it’s past midnight, and the blaring of horns swelling and fading every so often is familiar yet brand-new when he’s seeing it from above. Somewhere in the distance, a lone firework goes off, and it matches the feeling in his fluttering heart; he’s hopeful in a way that’s so much easier to admit to when the wind is roaring past him, ruffling his hair and turning the August heat bearable. Ahead of him, Simon’s arms are steady on the handles, his forearm flexing as he turns now and then, veins standing out faintly, and a swell of longing hits Jace hard enough to make him drag his eyes away in time to see that they’re dipping low over the foliage of Central Park. He’s suddenly awestruck again as they brush past the tops of trees, close enough that he could reach out and snag a rust-colored leaf.

“This is fucking _awesome_.” Jace says fervently into Simon’s ear, and Simon tips his head back enough to wink at Jace, quick and suddenly smooth, and Jace curses as the bike swerves suddenly. “Keep your eye on the road, dammit Lewis!”

“We’re not on the road,” Simon yells over the noise, looking forward again, “and how else can I flirt with you?”

Jace is flying through New York, his heart beating loudly in his rib cage, and he can _feel_ his runes light up under his clothes, strong and true and the part of him that proves he’s still something _good_. Simon is inescapable. Simon is _inevitable_.

“You don’t have to,” Jace says honestly, “you have me already.”

.

The fourth week of August –

The heat is suffocating, the worst of the summer, and it crawls through every space in the Institute and pools in the corners, making it hard to do anything. Jace almost can’t feel it, but he feels it too much at the same time, caged between the door of his room and Simon’s arms, Simon’s mouth a different kind of heat against his own.

The way Simon moves with him, the way he touches Jace with sure, excited hands leaves Jace feeling vulnerable and strangely hopeful, unsure of the future and prone to dreaming. He likes the way his broad hands fit across Simon’s waist, likes the imprint that fades in a few seconds, likes the way Simon always lets out a hoarse sigh when Jace drags Simon’s lower lip between his teeth.

Sometimes the way it feels is _too_ heady, too much like what it feels like to try to get high, or drunk, or something that Jace is only trying so it’ll destroy him slowly -  and then sometimes it feels like the kind of new thing that people write songs about, that people try to explain in words they can never catch. And in those times, he kisses Simon fiercely and takes something good for himself, takes Simon as his, and lets his heart strengthen in his chest.

“Thinking too much,” Simon murmurs, dragging his hand through Jace’s hair, “I’m right here. Come back to me.”

“Easy.” Jace says, and the fourth week of August finds Jace kissing Simon Lewis with everything he has in him.

 


End file.
